Top 10 Motorcycles for Millennials

I was a little surprised my kid liked the new Honda Rebel 500 as much as he did last week, but then all of us are surprised by our offspring, aren’t we? His daily driver lately is my old Yamaha R1. He finally got around to getting his motorcycle endorsement last month – on our borrowed KTM Super Duke GT… so he does have quite a varied motorcycle background for a kid who’s only 23 years old. In an effort to understand the younger moto-mentality, and as a service to all the manufacturers trying to figure out what the hell millennial motorcyclists want, anyway, I drilled further into my child’s mind to get down to the Top 10 of things.

He says he’s not a hipster, which he defines as “you want to seem retro and rustic but you aren’t”, but I think he’s in denial; he’d grow the beard if he could. Also, like many millennials, he has no conception of the value of a dollar. Why not rank these roughly in order of bikes he might actually be able to afford someday? Matter of fact, it looks like most of the OEMs are making appealing bikes, most of which are far less expensive than what the typical Boomer spends for a bagger or a tricked-out adventure bike. Here’s the kid’s list of the best motorcycles for millennials.